The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Chickpea flour is high in protein, high in iron, high in fiber and gluten free. Though, beyond hoping about the protein part, I didn't know any of that when I recently picked up a bag, mulling over new ways to add protein to a vegetarian diet.

Also called gram flour, besan, ceci flour and chana flour, chickpea flour has 6 grams of protein per quarter-cup serving and is 12 percent protein. By contrast, pastry flour has a protein content between 8 and 10 percent and cake flour 6 to 8 percent, according to The Joy of Baking.

Literally ground chickpeas — or garbanzo beans, if you prefer — some searching revealed that it's a popular ingredient in Indian and Middle Eastern food, and that the Romans used it to make a type of polenta. While the package I bought had a falafel recipe on the back, the most loved use for chickpea flour seems to be for socca, a street food native to Nice. A Mark Bittman collaborator offers a recipe based around a skillet and some long oven cooking, but after reading David Lebovitz'ssocca recipe, which convincingly insists that an outdoor wood-burning oven, in which one can quickly blister a socca while sipping plastic cups of frosty-cool rosé, is essential to an authentic preparation, I began considering alternate uses for my newfound ingredient.

Popovers, savory enough that the flour's beany nature wouldn't be misplaced, I reasoned, were a disaster, heavy and dense, perhaps from that missing gluten. The Joy of Baking (read too late) explains that gluten gives baked goods "elasticity and strength."

Eventually, my mind turned to fried artichoke hearts, a favorite, childhood special-occasion food. I have a clear memory of sneaking into the kitchen with a cousin to pilfer handfuls of the golden-brown hearts, arranged on a tray that had yet to be served. Because I rarely fry, I hadn't considered making them in years. Though once I did, I could think of little else.

The defrosted hearts are dunked in a thick-ish, pancake-like batter, dropped into just enough oil to cover the bottom of a skillet, are turned once and then generously sprinkled with coarse salt while still hot.

A chickpea flour–based batter, it turns out, has a taste I haven't yet acquired. But the end result — the fried shell light and mild — bore little resemblance to the uncooked batter's aggressively beany taste. To happy result, I served them hot to some friends when they walked through the door, in lieu of a more expensive cheese plate before dinner, and even my toddler devoured several, finishing the sweet, meaty artichoke hearts instead of stopping at the fried goodness, like I feared.

Still, the next time I added more salt to the batter and some grated cheese. Chopped fresh parsley would also be a nice addition.

More recently, stopping into a market that didn't carry frozen artichoke hearts, I opted for fresh, organic broccoli, deciding to use the florets and save the stems for another dish. Instead of dunking them a few at a time, I stupidly threw them all in at once, overcrowding the bowl. This meant that each bumpy floret received a thin veil of batter, instead of the thick coat I'd normally give the tame, flat artichoke hearts, but the result was still good — if not better. The hearty, downplayed beany quality of the flour complemented the brightness of the broccoli, and the crisp of the fried batter played nicely with textural elements of the soft florets and crunchy stems. I can easily imagine cauliflower or asparagus also working as stand-ins.

My husband, conveniently arriving at the stove from his desk as I transferred the first batch from the skillet to some waiting paper towels, chewed and smiled and nodded approvingly. "It's a nice mouthful," he concluded.

He added a few to a little snack plate he'd assembled of prosciutto and cheese and headed back to his desk. I popped another into my mouth, began transferring a second batch from the oil to the paper towels and wished for a frosty-cool glass of rosé.